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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Plasma is rock solid. Yes, you can break it. And that is called freedom.
If you don't install 30 third party widgets and themes, you'll be FINE, while still being able to make it yours.
That is why I always choose KDE Plasma (we'll see when Cosmic comes).
I love it but I definitely wouldn't call it rock solid. I have occasional small bugs here and there and especially with the Plasma 6 switch I've had the whole desktop going down (and taking all programs with it). That has been fixed though.
Encountering sleep/black screen bug is not freedom. The average linux user is shifting, its not longer being used only by teens/tech savvy. People want to get things done.
I don't think you understood my comment. Sorry.
Hear hear!
I was not satisfied with Plasma because I would have different window styles etc. With Plasma 6 I removed all themes and all the shit and customized it with builtin features only. It looks so nice and clean and just works like a charm.
It is way to overwhelming for me personally. I need something that isn't distracting.
If Xfce gets good Wayland support maybe I'll try it for fun at some point.
Distracting how?
Everything is an option or extension. I just want a basic system.
Then just install it and use it. No need for tweaks.
But them all the setting a buried under tons of options I'll never use. On gnome the settings menu is nice and clean.
There is a search bar..?
Plasma needs stability
Yeah, let's not mention Gnome breaking every peace of itself every update, along with abandoning APIs and hating QT apps. How can I use a DE, if I can almost certainly be sure that half of my extensions won't work after another update? Or that all of my QT apps will look weird (if they'll work at all)?
And I don't hate Gnome. It's cool and stuff, but you can't call it stable, 'cause KDE/XFCE/LXDE/[insert DE name here] will be far more stable than Gnome.
What's sad is the gnome team is so adamant about removing functionality to make their jobs easier.
This means you need extensions to make gnome usable, but it ends up feeling hacked together because it is.
I'll never forgive the gnome team for their defense of putting the dock on the side with no option to change it or not including something like gnome tweak tools by default.
It's really obvious gnome died with gnome3. That's when all the forks happened, and for good reason. The gnome3 team just listens to the wrong people.
I'm glad we have alternatives to that pile of crap.
If you rely on extensions when you use GNOME, that’s on you. Vanilla gnome is perfectly fine by itself if you understand the workflow. I only really want, not need, one extension and that’s pano the clipboard manager. Anything else is just extra.
Vanilla gnome is perfectly fine by itself if you understand the workflow.
Well, maybe it is the DE that should be able to adapt to my workflow and not the other way around
*me waiting for EventCalendar and Krunner-Symbols being updated for Plasma 6*
Luckily with Plasma it's not as common for extensions to break.
Kinda rich dissing KDE for its "unstability" and putting GNOME as its paradigm, the very DE well known to break every major version.
Sometimes this kind of posts/"content" make me feel like I must be the only person in the world who hasn't had major issues with KDE and it's been absolutely flawless lately, specially since 5 - but I then realize people without issues don't complain. It's the people who have issues with something that make the noise and make it a very big deal (and I'd argue most cases are of the PEBCAK type).
If the need is for something simple and stable I'd shoot for something like Xfce - but putting GNOME as the example of "stability" is nothing but laughable.
GNOME doesn't break, extensions do.
Ahaha is that why they're removing everything from the DE and forcing people to use extensions for things like desktop icons? So they can say "it's not us, it's the extensions"?
Its not as bad as some people make it
Gnome has been rock solid for me and I've only had a handful of issues in over 5 years on Fedora.
Gnome focuses on reliability while KDE focuses on innovation
Reliability? Gnome maybe stable... per version! New resease? New breaking change! Screws all your extension and themes, and removes certain features because its "a decade old" or something.
Well I had this one time I had issues with commands being sent to the shell. Super - arrow keys changed ttys instead of desktops and in the middle of updates I hit Ctrl c to kill a terminal app and it killed gnome desktop which killed the update process which bricked my system. Also XWayland apps are just buggy in ways I've never seen anywhere else.
It was real frustrating to set up with those bugs. My mother uses gnome but I refuse to install extensions because they break literally every single version of gnome. I probably should have put kde on her desktop tbh.
From my personal experience having used primarily Gnome and KDE, KDE plasma always seems to have weird quirks and bugs upon first install that require fiddling and Google searching or waiting for them to be patched.
make me feel like I must be the only person in the world who hasn’t had major issues with KDE and it’s been absolutely flawless lately, specially since 5
There's dozens of us! (kidding, it's clear in recent years it's way more than that, and I'm happy to see it.)
If folks are happy with how GNOME does things... I'm happy for them.
Man.... I'm doing to switch to Linux full time soon. I really love the Windows 10 desktop interface. (Don't judge me) It's flat. It's fast. It's intuitive. It's got good ergonomics.
KDE allows me to reproduce that to a certain point using third party extensions. However, KDE plasma has way, way too many configurable options. And I've had my whole interface break just by changing the themes to the ones provided by default. There's too much stuff to configure. It breaks easily too and trying to come back often means nuking your whole home directory and start over. And when you go use someone else's PC, you're almost certain they've modified their desktop to a point you can't even recognize anything.
Gnome is simple to a fault. What you see is what you get. The user is limited to what they can configure but your environment stays the same and you get the same experience from one PC to another. You know what to expect. And it just fucking works.
This is what Linux needs. One single user experience for all. It needs a champion to sell it to normal less tech savvy people. As much I love KDE and QT, Gnome is the way to go.
Well there’s a simple thing you are overlooking. You could just not theme Kde with third party themes and extentions and stuff like kvantum themes. It wouldn’t break, just like gnome. Still if you do decide to change stuff its going to be fine most of the time. The beauty of Kde is that there is the option to change stuff, but you aren’t required to.
KDEs default layout is really beautiful and well put together, just like gnome is.
Oh and don’t forget to take backups of your /home. Thats good practice for every desktop environment.
Oh and don’t forget to take backups of your /home. Thats good practice for every desktop environment.
The config files of the major desktop environments have become a mess though. Plasma absolutely shits files all over ~/.config and /.local/share where they sit mingled together with the config files of all your other applications and most of it is thoroughly undocumented. I've been in the situation where I wanted to restore a previous state of my Plasma desktop from my backups or just start with a clean default desktop and there is just no straightforward way to do that, short of nuking all your configurations.
Doing a quick find query in my current home directory, there are 57 directories and 79 config files that have either plasma or kde in the name, and that doesn't even include all the /.config/* files belonging to plasma or kde components that don't have it in their name explicitly (e.g. dolphinrc, katerc, kwinrc, powerdevilrc, bluedevilglobalrc , ...)
It was much simpler in the old days when you just had something like a ~/.fvwmrc file that was easy to backup and restore, even early kde used to store everything together in a ~/.kde directory.
Yes!!!! Thank you!
KDE doesn't even need me to use plugins to break though. Just messing with the themes that are delivered with KDE by default is enough to break it.
That really shouldn’t be happening, make sure to file a bug report if it’s the core themes!
Hasn’t happened to me in the years i have used KDE.
The last time I broke Plasma with themes, was because they weren't compatible anymore. They could do better with the store, though, there is a lot of stuff which doesn't work anymore.
There's also XFCE and LXQt, if you want simple, easy-to-use environments.
My elderly, non-techy mum has been using XFCE over a decade across three different distros (Mint, Xubuntu, Zorin) and her experience has been consistent all these years, with no major issues or complaints. If my mum can use Linux just fine - so can anyone else (who don't have any specific/complex hw/sw requirements that is). I don't see how much further intuitive it needs to get.
KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXQt etc all have their own place and audience. There's no need to have one experience for all - in fact, that would be a huge detriment, because you can never satisfy everyone with a one-size-fits-all approach. Take a look at Windows itself as an example - the abomination that was the Start Menu in Windows 8 (and the lack of the start button) angered so many, to the point that Microsoft had to backtrack some of those design decisions. Then there was the convoluted mess of Metro and Win32 design elements in Win 10, and finally the divisive new taskbar in Win11... you're never going to make everyone happy. And this is where Linux shines - all the different DEs and WMs offer a UX that suits a different audience or requirements. And we should continue to foster and encourage the development of these environments. Linux doesn't need to be like Windows.
What I'm saying is, Linux needs a champion. It needs a default DE to be the face of Linux everywhere if we want to advertise it and make it to mainstream. Too many different options will confuse people.
You most certainly can customise it, the previous version of Nobara had GNOME looking like windows. Not only can, but need to. Try starting out from default GNOME, and then compare it to what comes with distros. It's essentially unusable if you don't spend a lot of time and effort to customize it in order to have the basic functionality you'd expect coming from Windows.
This is what Linux needs. One single user experience for all. It needs a champion to sell it to normal less tech savvy people. As much I love KDE and QT, Gnome is the way to go.
GNOME is bad, and even if it wasn't, you most certainly don't need a one true DE. If you want that, you can go right back to win or mac.
It’s actually really funny you say that since starting out with default gnome is actually what got me to stick with Linux. I tried out Ubuntu style gnome and tried stuff like dash to panel and dash to dock but found it either unstable or hated it. Vanilla gnome is what got me to be at peace lol. I thought I didn’t like it at first but then it just suddenly clicked once I got over that. Calling it bad is just rude.
Try starting out from default GNOME, and then compare it to what comes with distros. It's essentially unusable if you don't spend a lot of time and effort to customize it in order to have the basic functionality you'd expect coming from Windows.
Oh man. I have to agree with you there. I've been using Ubuntu for so long I forgot how bad Gnome 3 is ootb. Ubuntu really brought some good quality of life improvement to the DE with their own modifications.
But I still stand by my argument that we need one desktop to be the star of Linux if et want more people to adopt it and for it to become mainstream. Giving most people too many options can confuse them.
If you want your environment to be consistent between desktops, keep it mostly stock. The default KDE themeing and setup is pretty damn similar to Windows 10, and I've kept it stock ever since I started using it ~1 ½ years ago.
Sure. But the problem with KDE is just how much stuff you can configure. It's too much and it's prone to breaking things.
The comment reads a bit like corporate-speak and or an advertisement.
Folks also don't need to be protected from themselves, because people perfectly capable of governing themselves once they figured out how plugins work.
One could read from this that plugins should be moderated better, maybe with automatic checks.
Try Linux Mint Cinnamon
I think we have to step back once in a while to get a wider perspective.
Both GNOME and Plasma are not just simply desktops. Oh no. They are entire stacks, complete with SDKs, for the user and desktop applications to use. They are orchestrated collections of libraries, services and apps, that together combine to make huge projects.
All of this requires contributions, all of this requires developer time. And in this economy? Open source is taking a kick to the pants.
You also got feature creep and tech debt galore, as well as needing to replace various bits and pieces when things become outdated, deprecated and unmaintainable.
Let's put it plainly though: there's a reason GNOME is reorganising, and why it's all about the money, dum-dum-didi-dum-dum. I think that it would be great if GNOME managed to restructure to facilitate more developer time, because the lofty goals they have set means having to put some elbow grease in it. The same goes for KDE.
Yes, it's the funding issue again. It's all about prioritization. With the economy being what it is, money doesn't stretch that far anymore either.
With all this in mind, I think we should all show some appreciation for the good work of the folks who make GNOME and Plasma. We are given two great options, with each their approaches, that show us what true competition looks like, and they are really giving it their all - despite what some people may be saying.
We should do better to remind ourselves this
Plasma has been pretty stable for the last several years I've been using it, especially X11. Wayland is buggier, but not terribly so, and it gets better all the time.
I've switched over to Wayland with Plasma now because it is stable enough for me now, I'm on Nobara.
I don't really use Gnome, so I can't speak to that experience.
If I were to vouch for a DE that is rock stable, it would be Cinnamon. I've never had any problems with Cinnamon. It's not super pretty, and it's a bit clunky, but if I want a DE that just works and gets out of my way, Cinnamon is my first choice.
It's what I use for my business laptop, LMDE with Cinnamon, rock solid.
I should also add that I've always used fully AMD hardware, CPU and GPUs, and never brand new. Always a year or two old, so the Linux kernel has time to address bleeding edge bugs and such.
I've been using KDE on Fedora for work for a few years now. Several system upgrades staeting from Fedora 36. Recently upgraded to plasma 6 and fedora 40. It is rock solid and very reliable.
And i do use alot of widgets, 3rd party apps, flatpaks, etc.
That's not a design goal of Plasma. They add features instead of fixing the existing ones. Its a little better now but KDE is just not what I want a computer to be.
At least they don't remove perfectly good ones 🤷♂️
It was stable for awhile, but I'm having issues with freezing now.
Gnome is currently the least stable major desktop. By far. It's an absolute disaster crippled by tons of little bugs that creep in when you least expect them. Even if you don't add anything to it and use Gnome as vanilla as you can get it, it's still going to be problematic.
Plasma has some small bugs here and there -- and there was a point a few years ago when Plasma seemed like they didn't care about bugs and instead just threw out a ton of shiny new pointless features every release instead -- but recently it is incredibly solid in general and more usable than anything else in Linux, by far. One of the only things I find "buggy" about Plasma is when someone tries to over-rice the desktop with tons of widgets and other things everywhere.